“This is more than a protest, it is an anti-capitalist movement”

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

WSWS reports from Athens
“This is more than a protest, it is an anti-capitalist movement”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/de...spot-d22.shtml

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Monday, December 22, 2008

For a Workers' Revolution in Greece!

• Long live the general revolt of the exploited youth and working class of Greece!

• Greece leads the working class of Europe and the world against the attacks of the capitalists and is in the vanguard of the fight for the socialist revolution!

• Down with the repressive government of Caramanlis and the social imperialists of PASOK!

On December 6 the police deliberately assassinated a 15 year old student Alexandros Grigoropoulos who was protesting with a group of friends in the neighborhood of Exarchia in Athens. This is the working class area where the University of Technology is located and which was the centre of the struggle against the bloody dictatorship of the Colonels in the 1970s.

The brutal killing aroused the just anger of the young rebels that have been for more than six days mounding huge demonstrations in the streets confronting the murderous police raising the battle cries “state killers”, “police killers”, “down with Caramanlis”, and attacked the key institutions of capitalist property and the bourgeois state: more than 370 banks, luxury hotels and police stations, many of which were set alight and burned down by the protestors.

The centre of Athens, the scene of the biggest struggles, has been almost destroyed. The youth rebels have occupied more than 13 supermarkets in the capital, the Polytechnic University and the neighborhood of Exarchia where the rebellion began has become an occupied quarter at the centre of rebellion from which it has spread from their to more than 10 other cities in Greece including Thessaloniki, Patras, Trikala and the islands of Crete and Corfu.

On the 9th of December more than six thousand youth rallied at the funeral of Alex, crying “Avenge the killing of Alex, march on Athens, confront the police killers, release the 150 plus political prisoners.”

• Long live the rebellion of the young workers of Greece who suffer 23% unemployed; who are lucky to find casual contract jobs, with the poverty wage of 650 euros, and are denied access to education by the privatization plans of the bourgeoisie!

• Long live the rebellion of the exploited youth con with their barricades and burning of cars and police stations, stake up the road of the immigrant worker youth struggle of the French Cités of 2006 that rose up to the cry of “Every night we will turn Paris into Baghdad” and the Italian youth, that have risen up on the last months to the cry of “We will not pay for your crisis”!

• Immediate freedom for all the jailed youth and workers!

• Dissolve and disarm the Police!

• For workers and popular courts to judge and punish all those responsible for the killing of Alexandro!

The rebellion of youth which began with barricades, street fights and the burning of police stations and led to general strikes, can erupt into a generalised revolt of the working class and exploited of Greece. The exploited have entered the revolutionary offensive.

But this huge generalized uprising by the exploited youth will not die down quietly. On the contrary it is the spark to alight the uprising of the whole working class and oppressed masses. Thus the strike of 23 October was led by the social democratic union bureaucracy allied to the Stalinist EEK (Communist Party of Greece) under pressure from below to put a lid on the workers opposition to the government’s plans. But the sectoral strikes and the huge general strike of 23 October, shows that the workers of Greece are determined to fight the coalition government of Caramanlis of the ND and the social democratic PASOK. This is because the government has no choice but to make the people pay the cost of the world crisis but cutting their living standards. Greece must do this because it is a minor imperialist power, subordinated to USA and German imperialism, the latter now the dominant imperialist power in Europe.

To pay for their solution to their crisis where the Greek banks have been bailed out by more than 28 billion euros, the bourgeois and its government under Caramanlis have launched ferocious attacks on the working class and the pensioners, with privatizations, cuts in public education and plans to privatize the universities. At the same time the wage basket has been reduced by inflation and more than 20% of the workers and their families now live below the poverty line.

This is the situation that caused the spark of the youth rebellion to light the fire of the working class struggles and the huge general strike of 10 December that paralyzed the country and took to the streets of Athens and many other cities.

The strike of the 10th brought out all the forces of the youth against the attacks on the pensions, and demanded 100% increase in the minimum wage. Facing these facts the Social Democratic and Stalinist bureaucracy of the GSEE (General Confederation of Workers) and ADEDY (main public sector union) raised these demands. Despite this, the strike turned into a generalized revolt of the exploited masses that, united with the youth rebellion took to the streets and barricades and breaking with all agreements between the bureaucracy and the regime, calling for an unlimited general strike against both the ND and PASOK that had taken turns for decades in exploiting, oppressing and repressing the workers.

With this generalized rebellion, the working class and the exploited of Greece have risen up against the crisis, the attacks of capitalism and all the schemes by the bosses and the treacherous workers leaders to divide and rule the workers ranks. We have today in Greece a revolutionary situation, such has not been seen by European imperialism for more than 30 years, when in 1975 the heroic Portuguese revolution erupted.

That is why the major imperialist powers are alarmed: “There is an insurrectionary climate in Athens”; “Greece has no state”, editorialized the leading French imperialist daily, Le Monde; alarmed because the workers suburbs of Paris, London, Madrid, Ro¬me, Berlin etc, contain the same unemployed masses, super-exploited migrant workers, disaffected youth, that is, the same miserable conditions that caused the uprising in Greece. 160 years after it was written in the Communist Manifesto, the Greek working masses are writing in the streets – in the letters of struggle, of fire, of strikes, of blood – the same words: “A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of Communism.”

• End the dictatorship of international finance capital. Stop the attack on the world working class and the slide to barbarism…Forward to the socialist revolution!

In our view, the uprising of the proletariat, the exploited youth and masses of Greece, that mobilized 10s of thousands on 10 December to the cry of “State murderer” and “Down with Caramanlis”, demonstrates that, facing a bankrupt imperialist capitalist system in crisis, that in order to defend the most basic rights and living conditions, it is necessary for the masses to launch a political struggle against the regime to take the power and to put in its place a state of the workers and all exploited people.

This bankrupt capitalist system has exposed itself before the eyes of the masses: the system is rotten and can only survive on the backs of our slavery. Today, against all the reformist lies about capitalism, Greece affirms the revolutionary Marxist program of the 1V International of 1938 that states clearly that: confronting the bankruptcy and decadence of capitalism, and the advance of barbarism, the only salvation for the exploited is in the workers socialist revolution, and that the struggle for this revolution is the most important and urgent task of the proletariat. For the working class, the exploited and the oppressed peoples to live, imperialism must die, and this task, on the whole continent, is concentrated in the struggle for the Socialist United States of Europe.

In this struggle the proletariat and youth of Greece are building on all previous struggles of their class brothers and sisters of Europe. They join with and advance the spontaneous uprising of the Belgian general strike of workers against their leadership. They join with also and learn the lessons of the huge spontaneous uprisings of the Italian masses of the 17 October which paralysed the country taking to the streets in the name of the rank and file of the Cobas, against the treacherous leaderships of the GIL who collaborate with the government of the “Tsar” Berlusconi today, and before that Prodi.

• Long live the spontaneous uprising of the exploited youth and the “kukulofori” (the “hoodies” who fight on the barricades)!

• Long live the fighting spirit of the proletariat and the Greek masses who show they are more conscious and advanced politically than all the “plans” of the treacherous union bureaucracy and the reformists of all colors!

Meanwhile the PASOK and the union bureaucracy calls for “calm”, for Caramanlis’ resignation, and for new elections in order to strangle the fight of the masses. The Stalinists of the EEK (CPG) take a position as in Chile where their “Red Police” openly “condemns the use of violence” by workers – as if the bourgeois state regime is not “violent” when it murders Alex and condemns the youth to a future life of unemployment! – and forms a security guard armed with batons to contain and suppress the heroic youth mobilizations. So, the cry of the Chilean youth “The ‘pacos de rojo’ (red cops) are dangerous” is today given new life on the streets and barricades of Greece.

Today, those who have usurped the name of Trotskyism to rescue the “progressive” or “Bolivarian” bourgeoisie; to call for a vote for Chirac “against Le Pen” in France; who say that the victory of Zapatero in the Spanish election of 2004 was an “expression of the class struggle against the war”, are doing the opposite, expropriating the name of Trotskyism. All have promoted the politics of class collaboration, bowing down before the bourgeois state, trying to reform bankrupt capitalism, instead of joining the campaign to support the magnificent general uprising of the students and workers of Greece who are opening the road to the socialist revolution in that country.

Today the anarchist movement has capitalized enormously from the radicalization of the exploited youth of Greece. This is no accident. The anarchist movement has maintained a tradition of courageous and intransigent struggle against the bourgeois state, while the renegades of Trotskyism have in the recent decades transformed themselves into reformists, providing a left cover and support for the bloody imperialist regimes of the European powers.

So today it is anarchism – that demonstrated its historic bankruptcy in the Spanish revolution in 1936-9 – that is benefiting from this magnificent radicalization of the exploited Greek masses. For this reason we must redouble our fight against those who have usurped Trotskyism and destroyed the 4 International, for an international regroupment, a Zimmerwald and Kienthal of the healthy Trotskyists and revolutionary workers organizations, and open the road to build on the basis of th3e program and legacy of the 4 International of 1938, a world party of socialist revolution.

• Long live the general revolt of the exploited youth, the working class and the Greek masses!

• Down with the repressive and starvation regime of Caramanlis supported by the social imperialist PASOK!

• Forward to the Socialist Revolution!

The task of the moment is the centralization and coordination of the pickets into one national workers and popular militia, the preparation of a general strike to bring down the regime of Caramanlis and the pro-imperialist coalition of ND and PASOK – sustained by the union bureaucracy and the “red police” of the EEK – to open the way to the proletarian revolution that will bring class justice for Alexandros, good work and a living wage for the working class, free education for all the children, and meet all the most basic needs of the masses.

• For a Workers Socialist Greece, for the Socialist United States of Europe from the British Isles to the Russian steppes!

• Our class brothers and sisters of Greece mark the road: against the catastrophe that the capitalists try to download on the proletariat and all the exploited of the world, we must fight to prepare and organize a true international counter-offensive of the working class, to expropriate the expropriators and open the road to the international socialist revolution!

• For the working class and the exploited of the world to live, the capitalist system must die!


Leninist Trotskyist Fraction December 2008
(unofficial translation by CWG)


Posted by dave at 2:27 PM
Labels: Anarchism, Bolivarian revolution, crisis, greece, Stalinism, Trotskyism

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Ian Bone

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SIBERIAN SOLIDARITY!

Fair play to the comrades in Siberia for their brave - and cold - Greek solidarity actions on december 20th - it takes a lotta bottle to protest in Russia these days . I particularly liked the ‘duck tape’failure episode at Irkutsk where the temperature ws 32 degrees BELOW ZERO.
Details here: http://avtonom.org/index.php?nid=2131


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December 23, 2008

‘THE ECONOMIST’ FEARS GROWTH OF ‘ANARCHY INTERNATIONAL’

RIOTERS OF THE WORLD UNITE

They have nothing to lose but their web cameras


AP
EVERY scholar of 20th-century history can tell you about the Communist International—usually called Comintern, and strictly speaking the third in a series of four global fraternities whose aim was to pursue the class struggle all over the world.
Is it possible to imagine an Anarchist International, a trans-national version of the inchoate but impassioned demonstrations that have ravaged Greece this month? (Perhaps because it is easier to say what Greece’s malcontents are against than what they are for, the word “anarchist” is an accepted catch-all term for the anti-establishment rebels who form the hard core of the Athenian protesters.)
By definition, anarchy is harder to propagate than rigid Leninism. Whatever is spreading from Athens, it is not a clear programme for a better world. The malcontents of Greece include ideological class warriors, nostalgists for the protests against the junta of 1967-74 and people (including drug dealers and bank robbers) with a grudge against the police. Relations between police and the counter-culture have worsened recently; the police are accused (rightly) of bullying migrants, the bohemians of dallying with terrorism. A messy scene, with no obvious message.
But the psychological impulse behind the Greek protests—a sense of rage against all authority, which came to a head after a 15-year-old boy was killed by a police bullet—can now be transmitted almost instantaneously, in ways that would make the Bolsheviks very jealous. These days, images (moving as well as still) spread faster than words; and images, of course, transcend language barriers
This became obvious during the French riots of 2005, when teenagers posted blogs that urged people to “burn the cops”—and made massive use of text messages to co-ordinate the protests. The youths that trashed Budapest in 2006 relied on blogs to enlist supporters, and distribute an audio recording of the prime minister admitting government corruption.
Hungarian blogs were also used to aggregate visual evidence of police brutality. There were novel online projects such as an “Interactive Riot Walkthrough”, which superimposed photos of the latest events on a map of Budapest, offering “virtual tours” of the city as it burned.
Already, the Greek riots are prompting talk of a new era of networked protest. The volume of online content they have inspired is remarkable. Photos and videos of the chaos, often shot with cellphones, were posted online almost in real time. Twitter, a service for exchanging short messages, has brimmed with live reports from the streets of Athens, most of them in Greek but a few in English.
A tribute to the slain teenager—a

clip of photos with music from a popular rock band—appeared on YouTube, the video-sharing site, shortly after his death; more than 160,000 people have seen it. A similar tribute group on Facebook has attracted more than 130,000 members, generating thousands of messages and offering links to more than 1,900 related items: images of the protests, cartoons and leaflets.
A memorial was erected in Second Life, a popular virtual environment, giving its users a glimpse of real-life material from the riots. Many other online techniques—such as maps detailing police deployments and routes of the demonstrations—came of age in Athens. And as thousands of photos and videos hit non-Greek blogs and forums, small protests were triggered in many European cities, including Istanbul (see picture above) and Madrid. Some 32 people were arrested in Copenhagen.
The spread of sympathy protests over what began as a local Greek issue has big implications for the more formal anti-globalisation movement. That movement has ignored the idea of spontaneous but networked protest, and instead focused on taking large crowds to set-piece events like summits. Such methods look outdated now. Governments are not the only things that networked “anarchy” threatens.




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[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Support the uprising of workers and young people in Greece
Issued by: CPGB-ML
Issued on: 21 December 2008

At the time of writing, the mass-scale political unrest in Greece shows little sign of slowing down. This series of demonstrations, occupations and strikes erupted when, on 6 December, a 15-year-old student, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, was murdered in the streets of central Athens by police guards. Although the police have implied that Alexandros was engaged in “deviant behaviour” (not that this would warrant being shot through the heart), all eyewitness reports stated that the police officers involved were not attacked by Alex and his friends and were not in physical danger at any time. The shooting represents an increasingly authoritarian and repressive approach being taken by the Greek state, in particular towards young people.

Within a few minutes of Alex being pronounced dead, young people, students and workers came out onto the streets of Athens in protest. Huge demonstrations took place, spreading quickly from Athens to many other cities, including Thessaloniki, Ioannina, Komotini, Kastoria, Petras, Tripoli and more. Over the following days, thousands of high school students marched against local police stations, students occupied university campuses, pupils occupied schools and workers went on strike. At the time of writing, dozens of universities are still being held under occupation by students and professors, including the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the National Technical University of Athens and the Athens University of Economics and Business. The teachers’ unions estimate that around 600 schools are under occupation by pupils. Some actions have been particularly daring: according to Kathimerini (an English-language newspaper in Greece), a “group of around 30 protesters forced their way into the headquarters of state broadcaster ERT and interrupted a news broadcast featuring Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis. For about a minute, the protesters stood in front of the camera holding banners reading ‘Stop watching, get out into the streets’”.

A one-day general strike on 10 December, called before the shooting of Alexandros in response to the government’s handling of the economic crisis, gained momentum and brought the country’s economy to a standstill.

Solidarity actions have taken place in dozens of countries around the world, particularly in Europe. In Austria, thousands of demonstrators protested outside the Greek Embassy in Vienna; in France, some 3,000 demonstrators gathered outside the Greek Embassy in Paris; there were demonstrations in over 20 German cities; and hundreds protested in Dublin, Istanbul, Seville, Madrid, London, Copenhagen and many other cities in solidarity with the workers, students, youth and unemployed people of Greece. Clearly, the bourgeoisie worldwide is shaking in its shoes as a result of the uprising in Greece and its international significance. IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned there was a risk of social unrest spreading unless the global financial sector shared wealth more evenly (See ‘Greek police teargas youths in 2nd week of protests’, Reuters, 15 December).

Brutal response of the Greek state

Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis quickly vowed to put an end to the work of “the extremist elements who exploited the tragedy”. (‘New protests planned after looters rampage in Athens’, AFP, 8 December), and indeed police forces were deployed in huge numbers against every demonstration and occupation.

According to the Telegraph of 12 December, Greek police had in the preceding five days released 4,600 canisters of tear gas – so much that they were having to appeal to Israel and Germany to provide fresh supplies. (‘Greece “runs out of tear gas” during violent protests’). It should be noted that tear gas is not as innocuous as it might sound. It is a chemical compound that irritates the cornea and conjunctival membranes, resulting in a severe burning sensation in the eyes, streaming tears, severe skin irritation, irritation of the upper respiratory tract (leading to breathing difficulties) and panic. It can induce temporary blindness, nausea and, in the case of allergic reaction, anaphylaxis and death.

Arrested demonstrators have been tortured, and people around the world have been shocked to see the images of Greek police beating peaceful demonstrators. Even Amnesty International, hardly an agency of proletarian insurrection, have issued a statement saying that its members have witnessed “officers involved in policing the riots engaged in punitive violence against peaceful demonstrators, rather than targeting those who were inciting violence and destroying property … In this context, [Amnesty] is concerned about the ill-treatment of two of its members, who were beaten with batons by the police.” (‘Greek police use punitive violence against peaceful demonstrators’).

In an effort to justify the extraordinary brutality employed by the state forces, the government has been painting the protesters as “a small group of hardcore anarchists”; however, even the international imperialist press admits that the number of protesters runs into the hundreds of thousands. The government and the right-wing media have been trying to scare the Greek population with stories about ‘hooded youths’, condemning protesters for coming to demonstrations with masks. In our humble opinion, if state forces are likely to use tear gas, it is a sensible protester that wears a mask as this offers some protection from the state’s chemical assault.

It is almost certainly the case that there are agents-provocateurs involved at some level on the fringes of the Greek uprising, just as agents-provocateurs are involved at some level on the fringes of every important mass movement. However, it is crucial that we do not join with the bourgeois press in overstating the importance of such groups and individuals; they must not distract from the struggle that is taking place, and the state must not be allowed to use them as an excuse for its brutality. Take the example of Iraq: there are agents-provocateurs in Iraq who try to divide Iraqis by planting bombs in market places and the like. The imperialist press tries to paint the actions of these small organisations as reflecting the will of the Iraqi resistance as a whole. They try to accentuate their role and use them as an excuse for the most brutal acts of repression. We are not, and have never been, fooled by these games, and they certainly do not stop us from calling for victory to the Iraqi resistance. Similarly, such games must not detract from our support for the legitimate popular struggle that is taking shape in Greece.

Alienation of the workers and young people from capitalism and social democracy

The protests in Greece indicate very clearly that the masses of the Greek population are deeply at odds with the Greek state. On the economic front, there is increasing unemployment (especially among young people) and poverty pay. Social welfare is under attack, especially in the areas of education and healthcare. Minimum needs are not being met, but the government is set to inject 28 billion euros to ‘save’ the banking system.

Concurrent with the reduction in living standards has been a visible increase in political repression by the state. This year, dozens of demonstrators have been arrested and tortured by police, and Greek police are becoming notorious for their use of torture and excessive use of force, particularly towards workers and young people.

The workers and youth have stopped believing in the benevolence of the state, and are starting to understand – albeit at a relatively primitive level – that capitalism is the cause of their problems.

At the same time, there is growing alienation of the Greek masses from social democracy. It is telling that one of the buildings occupied in recent weeks was the central office of the country’s main labour union, the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE). This would appear to indicate a certain antipathy between the disaffected Greek workers and the trade union bureaucracy, whose role in recent decades has been to consistently undermine workers’ struggle and to support the perpetuation of capitalism (not unlike the main elements of the trade union bureaucracy in Britain).

Workers in Britain and elsewhere must support the uprising in Greece. Whatever its immediate results, its long-term significance will be the re-awakening of the Greek workers, students and peasants. Huge swathes of the population are increasingly falling outside the sphere of influence both of the state and its agent in the working class movement, namely social democracy.

The developments in Greece are making the capitalists and social democrats in all countries tremble. For too long have the European working masses been passive victims, or active co-conspirators, as the imperialists have ruthlessly grabbed and exploited the world’s land, mineral wealth, markets and labour. The current capitalist crisis of overproduction will not only expose the decadent, parasitic, moribund nature of the capitalist system, but will again reveal the means to effect a cure – not by “enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” but rather, through concerted mass action, “to take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing, end them”.

Alexandros Grigoropoulos and all the nameless, faceless victims of imperialism will then not have died in vain.


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[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Police hit Greek streets

(Thursday 15 January 2009)






ABOUT 400 police officers demonstrated against violence in Athens on Thursday after riots in Greek cities and attacks on police by an ultra-left group.

Uniformed protesters gathered in Syntagma Square under a banner that read: "No to violence."
Last month's riots were sparked by the fatal police shooting of a teenage boy on December 6. Police were targeted in shootings on December 23 and January 5 that seriously wounded one officer. The ultra-left Revolutionary Struggle group has claimed responsibility.
Policeman Vassilis Alimaras said: "Violence against the Greek police is violence against Greek society."
In a statement published in an Athens newspaper on Thursday, Revolutionary Struggle vowed to continue to attack police.

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